Mills hopes new book will send message of unity to 'seventh generation'

photo by: Austin Hornbostel/Journal-World

Billy Mills, a 1964 Tokyo Olympic gold medalist and alumnus of Haskell and the University of Kansas, was the keynote speaker at Haskell’s graduation ceremony on Friday, May 3, 2024.

When the United States government created the Red Cloud Agency in 1871, the predecessor to the modern Pine Ridge Reservation, Oglala Lakota chief Red Cloud wanted a white man named B.B. Mills to serve as his agent.

The chairman of the Board of Indian Commissioners denied the request, writing that because Mills had a Lakota wife and children, he was too involved in the Native community to “have the ability or inclination to do serious work for the salvation of the Indians” and that his appointment would risk “perpetuating the evils of the past” (as quoted in the Wyoming History Journal).

Mills died shortly after the nomination was rejected, and his widow, Sally Bush Mills, was part of Crazy Horse’s gang that surrendered at the Red Cloud Agency six years later.

In short, the ancestors of Billy Mills—an Olympic hero with ties to Lawrence, but also the great-grandson of BB and Sally Bush Mills—witnessed pivotal moments in Lakota interaction with the United States.

Speaking of the larger history of his people and others, Billy Mills said, “Conditional treaties were signed. However, those roads quickly became deceptive, littered with broken treaties, residential school trauma, land theft and genocide.”

That trauma worsened over the next few decades, Mills said, and “our elders said it would take seven generations to heal.”

The release Tuesday of “Wings of an Eagle: The Gold Medal Dreams of Billy Mills” — a children’s book that chronicles Mills’ journey from his childhood on the Pine Ridge Reservation to his gold medal in the 10,000 meters at the 1964 Summer Olympics — is an effort by Mills to positively influence current students, who he says are the “seventh generation” for the Lakota and other tribes.

Mills said he was inspired by his readings of Crazy Horse over the years; further, he noted, Sitting Bull said, “Let us put our minds together and see what kind of life we can create for our children.”

And Mills’ father often told him, “You’re broken-hearted, son. Find your dream. It’s the pursuit of a dream that will heal you.”

“I wanted to make it clear that everyone’s dream in this class can be achieved, and the most powerful tool to achieve that is to have a dream and believe in it, and secondly, for everyone to understand the diversity of each other,” Mills told the Journal-World. “… By collectively supporting each other, the generations that are older, the generations that are seventh generation and beyond, they will really draw the horizon of America’s future.”

The book was co-written by Mills, who attended the Haskell Institute and the University of Kansas before his Olympic glory (and is now the namesake of a Lawrence college), and author Donna Janell Bowman, with illustrations by S.D. Nelson.

Mills said Nelson was one of his heroes. Nelson used the style of late 19th-century ledger art created by the Native peoples of the Great Plains.

“It’s very action-oriented, with context,” said Pat Mills, Billy Mills’ wife. “And it works perfectly with his book.”

As for Bowman, she came to Billy and Pat’s home in Sacramento, California, with her son and impressed them with her “sensitivity” and “thorough research.”

“I felt like it took her a long time, the research she had to do, to get to know me, maybe, completely,” Billy Mills said. “I’m half Lakota, half white. And she described me so accurately, but I felt like it was possible and it fit my idea of global, national and local unity.”

He said the natives told him, “She got it.”

“The first time I read the book, I cried,” he said, “not because of little Billy and the stories, but because Donna Bowman captured the sacredness of the spirit that I was trying to convey to young children in the book, the power of ‘we are one.'”

He recounted, as one of the many ways this message was reflected in his own life, his experience of leaving the Black Hills, “the heart of all that is” for the Lakota, and then, on his way to Japan for the fateful Olympics, seeing Mount Fuji and realizing it served the same purpose for the Japanese.

On that trip, Mills, of course, became the first American to win the 10,000 meters, an iconic Olympic moment when he outsprinted Australian Ron Clarke and Tunisian Mohammed Gammoudi, immortalized by Dick Bank’s comment: “Look at Mills! Look at Mills!” Mills is still the only American to win gold in the event 60 years later.

Mills, who turned 86 on Sunday, is very busy. He co-founded the charity Running Strong for American Indian Youth, which says on its website that Mills travels more than 300 days a year and “visits Native American communities across the United States and speaks to young people about healthy living and pride in their heritage.”

He was back in Lawrence in May, when he delivered the commencement address at Haskell’s graduation.

“I’m home when I’m here (in California),” he said. “I go back to Pine Ridge, I’m home, I feel the culture, the traditions, the spirituality of the Lakota. I go to Lawrence and I see this growing sacredness of unity through diversity, and I’m home.”

True to the importance he places on this kind of cultural exchange, he and his family will be participating in the Paris Olympics, where he hopes to meet as many Olympians from around the world as possible.

“We’re about to turn off the lights and put away the book we read at night and it’s midnight,” Mills said. “Well, it’s noon in the Maldives and we get a text from one of my fellow Olympians. We have friends in many countries around the world and because of the Olympics we can connect and meet a friend’s friend in every country on the planet.”

Additionally, Mills will donate his Olympic warm-up suit to the Olympic Museum, providing the public with a memento of the victory that inspired him to take this path in the first place.

photo by: Photo/AP File

FILE – In this Oct. 14, 1964, file photo, U.S. Marine Lt. Billy Mills pulls off a stunning upset by winning the Olympic 10,000-meter race in Tokyo. Mills set an Olympic record of 28:24:4 and became the only American to win the event.